By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
Leave it to the Brits to put American politics in some form of perspective that we might not always recognize on this side of The Pond.
A BBC broadcast on NPR this morning was talking about President Biden’s aggressive agenda. He sought, and received, a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. Now he is going after a $2.2 trillion infrastructure reform package that he wants enacted by the Fourth of July. Biden also is pressing hard for gun control legislation that doesn’t plow under the Second Amendment to our Constitution.
The British analyst — whose name escapes me at the moment — then offered a tart description of the president, calling him an “old man in a hurry.”
Well, there you go.
Joe Biden is by far the oldest man ever elected president. He is 78 years of age. He turns 79 in November. Were he to run for re-election in 2024, he would do so at the tender age of 82.
Why does this matter? Let’s see. It matters because President Biden knows — as someone who has buried two of his children — how fragile this Earthly existence can be. His infant daughter died in a horrific car crash in 1972 along with the first Mrs. Biden; his two sons were grievously injured in that tragic event.
The older of his sons then contracted glioblastoma — an aggressive form of brain cancer — and died in 2015 at the age of 46.
Joe Biden campaigned for the presidency partly by reminding us of his humanity and how he appreciates the fragility of our life on this good Earth.
In that context I presume you can say that time is no human being’s friend. Father Time becomes even more menacing to those of us who have logged the amount of time that Joe Biden has racked up already.
Just as Bill Clinton told us in the 1990s that the “era of big government is over,” Joe Biden has taken an entirely different approach. Big government must serve the people who pay for it, or so it appears to be when President Biden discusses the big things he wants done.
The backdrop, though, is indisputable. Joseph Biden Jr. is an old man who I hope with all my heart remains in good health. However, old men such as Joe Biden cannot depend fully on anything in life.
Yes, the president appears to be in a hurry. I cannot blame him for wanting to get things done … as in right now!